Drafting Room
Putting an image onto the web for everyone to see can be a nerving experience. Having people comment on it is worse. The success of a new map can come down to the first few comments. If these are positive, it can spur people onto new heights, if they are negative, people withdraw and human nature dictates that we fight. But the attitude of the map maker always helps. Someone who is positive will succeed while anyone who is negative will fail. Ask yourself which one are you? If you are the latter, then do not come to the foundry as negativity causes flame wars that help no one make maps.
natty dread wrote:The first thing that I would advise is to get rid of all the line connections and replace them with territories & borders. Seriously, it's like a mess of lines there, making for a very confusing look, and you need to simplify this a lot - when I say simplify I don't mean the gameplay, but the visual look of the map... you need to make the map easier to read, and eliminating that criss-cross of lines is a good first step towards that.
... you have the right idea with using textures on the map, but they will need some work. Especially the canvas effect on the right/upper right of the map - the left side looks like it's trying to imitate grassland terrain, so why would you have a paper/canvas type texture on the right? The cork texture on the legend is pretty nice though. But why is there a bare slab of grey in the middle? It looks bland compared to the rest of the map.
Anyway, keep on working, there's good potential here.
This from natty is a good way to say a map looks like shit but keep at it.
All of these points were correct, he explained why it needed changing, but not how.
Version 4.
When I say that this is version four, it is really version 20 odd. That is how many times this map changed on my computer before posting this. You can clearly see the final map on this image, Shaka has been moved, Kingul has been added to the map (removed when a better name came up).
This layout came about when the first image I posted looked confusing. As it was my map, I understood all of the finer points, what attacked where, what each symbol meant and more importantly, how to win.
But what it lacked was understandability. It needed a lot of clarity.
Industrial Helix wrote:Your map needs a legend indicating where the 150 yard line is and where the kings are, ect. These symbols and colors need to translate to something.
Bruceswar wrote:your legend font is hard to read if you ask me.
Bruceswar wrote:maybe you need white letters... I am struggling to read it.
Clarity is the ability to play a map without having to read a legend. We all understand the territory lines but what happens when they change from black to red? Like I had. What does it mean? This has to go into the legend in a clear way. What does brown grass do? Does it mean anything different from the green grass? Why do the rocks small and not large? Trees need brown earth beneath them? All of these things need sorting. All comments were correct when made - but for some it was an easy thing to say while others needed to be rude about it. When I say rude, it meant that their comment was thought about and rejected.
Flame Wars
Nothing annoys me more than when a stupid comment is made by anyone! The problem with making maps for this site is that anyone can comment. From a pre-pubescent, spotty, runny nosed kid with no experience to an experienced map maker with 20 maps under his belt. One thinks he knows best while the other normally does know best. What both have in common is the ability to not understand the word
NO.
No, for some reason has the ability to rile people to such an extent that we get flame wars. You have all seen and read them, but 2 or 3 pages in a map thread is not a good thing. Try sorting all the good stuff from the bad can be a hard thing. Before I started my map, I had read the rules of map making and one rule is that all changes have to be made unless it can be rebutted by the map maker or someone else from the community. Remember the old adage of too many cooks spoil the broth? I got lucky with only a very minor war between me and
Dukasaur. He was right (to a point
) but it does make it harder. Just remember, to play nice kiddies.
Bring on the names.
If you look at the above image, only the British soldiers and Zulu chieftains have names. Kingul was a made up name but it was time to find names for all territs. That is 80 names for Zulu warriors. Good thing for the internet. But there is one problem which I had not figured on - all of the lists on the internet where identical and I could only find around 70 names. Some had to be made up for the missing territs. These include koontz (my on line name, fun for me to play), Anya, Tata, Hungarian for mum and grandfather and Jadzia; my daughters middle name taken from Star Trek.
Kingul got the boot for Buthelezi. All of the chieftain names have meaning...
Cetshwayo - leader during the Zulu war.
Dabulamanzi - brother to Cetshwayo and led the Zulus at Rorke's Drift.
Mpande - Longest reign over Zulu nation 1798–1872.
Ndaba - chieftain of Zulu nation 1745-1763.
Phunga - Chieftain of modern day Zulu nation inside South Africa.
Shaka - United the northern tribes of the Zulu people and gained control over most of what became South Africa.
Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi - the Zulu chieftain that played Dabulamanzi in the film Zulu.
For the British, I always wanted to use the ones that had won the Victoria cross, Britain's highest military medal. Not for any other reason.
Lieutenant John Rouse Merriott Chard, 5th Field Coy, Royal Engineers
Lieutenant Gonville Bromhead; B Company, 2nd/24th Foot
Corporal William Wilson Allen; B Company, 2nd/24th Foot
Private Frederick Hitch; B Company, 2nd/24th Foot
Private Alfred Henry Hook; B Company, 2nd/24th Foot
Private Robert Jones; B Company, 2nd/24th Foot
Private William Jones; B Company, 2nd/24th Foot
Private John Williams; B Company, 2nd/24th Foot
Surgeon James Henry Reynolds; Army Medical Department
Acting Assistant Commissary James Langley Dalton; Commissariat and Transport Department
Corporal Christian Ferdinand Schiess; 2nd/3rd Natal Native Contingent
Because of the 11 British names, and the layout of the map, getting the map playable was going to be a problem. How to get an odd number to fit nicely into an even map.
Little men from Mars.
With the legend and map growing with each version, both wanting the limited space given to map makers (large map 840 pixels wide / 800 deep) something needed to give. Also something was needed for clarity. I came up with the little men from Mars. My legend text explaining what territ did what, why and how was unreadable! Always much easier to show it.
Meet the Zulu chieftains and the River Warriors.
It became clear with this image, I was getting somewhere (with a lot of help form others). After a couple more updates (now version 5.4) I got this.
thenobodies80 wrote:Onward and Upward!
Time to play with the big boys.
MrBenn wrote:At last
Long long way to go.
Next time - Impassables, fonts, layout, and Victor Sullivan jumps all over gameplay.
The most clever thing though was insisting on getting the big payoff before agreeing to clan leadership. I wish I had thought of that. 
